Date archives
January 2017

Golden Boy Promotion’s $300 million lawsuit against Al Haymon and the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) for allegedly violating antitrust laws and the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act was dismissed by a federal judge. The case, which began in May of 2015, ended when summary judgement was granted by the judge. The lawsuit was centered on Al Haymon attempting to monopolize boxing and violating the Muhammad Ali Act.

The Muhammad Ali Act requires that fighter managers and promoters be separate individuals in an effort to keep fighters from being taken advantage of. Al Haymon works as a manager for many fighters and the lawsuit alleges that Al Haymon is serving as the promoter and manager for fighters, using the local promoters as a way to circumvent the Ali Act. However, no fighter had said that they were pressured or coerced into selecting a certain promoter. In fact, Judge Walter cited Haymon’s willingness to work with many promoters as a reason for the case’s dismissal.

The series, sponsored by Tecate, will air on ESPN2 and will be simulcast in Spanish on ESPN Deportes as well as streamed on ESPN3. A few of the 2-hour cards, which will generally take place twice per month, will not be available on ESPN2, however, because of scheduling conflicts.

The deal includes 18 cards in 2017 (which will air either on Thursdays, Fridays or Saturdays) and 24 more in 2018. ESPN has an option for a third year of the series.

ESPN Exectuvie VP of Programming and Scheduling Burke Magnus said:

“We are excited to announce this new agreement with Golden Boy Promotions, one of the world’s top promoters… ESPN and ESPN Deportes look forward to featuring a new series of exciting world-class matches, along with a deep and wide variety of studio and digital content, in this multi-year, exclusive, live fight package.”

Golden Boy Boxing owner Oscar De La Hoy cited ESPN’s reach as a big selling point in entering into the partnership. The promotional company will rely on sponsors to pay the fees for air time instead of relying on licensing fees from ESPN.

On the show Nunes demonstrates how to perform a rear-naked choke on Christian Slater who was co-hosting with Kelly Ripa. She is able to slowly go through the motions that can establish to some viewers that there is a process to finishing MMA fights and that there is a lot of technique and smarts that goes into winning.

After her win over Ronda Rousey, Amanda Nunes made an appearance during daytime TV on FOX 11 in Los Angeles. The hosts asked good questions to get Amanda Nunes to get her thoughts on what she saw in the Rousey fight and her reactions to Rousey’s strategy. At the end of the interview Nunes discusses her plans to fight for the 145-pound women’s title.

Making daytime TV appearances was a huge part of making Ronda Rousey a star and pushing women’s MMA into the spotlight. Unfortunately, she does have to answer whether she would fight a man and give her opinion on a Mayweather-McGregor matchup.

Mark Hunt has filed a civil lawsuit against the UFC, Dana White, Brock Lesnar, alleging racketeering, fraud, breach of contract, negligence, and others. Mark Hunt lost by decision to Brock Lesnar in the co-main event at UFC 200. After the fight it was revealed that Lesnar had failed two drug tests from samples taken before UFC 200. The lawsuit was filed in Nevada District Court.

UFC athletes need to be eligible to be tested by USADA four months before their first fight. Lesnar was given an exception by the UFC to the USADA testing process so that he could participate in UFC 200. Brock Lesnar had failed drug tests while he was at the UFC before becoming a professional wrestler full-time. The Nevada State Athletic Commission fined Lesnar $250,000 from his $2.5 million purse. Lesnar was also suspended for a year. Hunt believes that the punishment for doping should be much more arguing that the punishments are currently too low to deter people from doping.

The Association of Boxing Commissions and Combat Sports has created a simplified version of scoring criteria for MMA. There are now only three criteria score rounds: effective striking and grappling, effective aggressiveness, and fighting area control. If both fighters are equal in the first criteria, then the second is a tiebreaker, and if the first and second criteria are a tie, then the third criteria will be used.

Fans will likely see more 10-8 rounds as well. Rounds scored 10-9 are for rounds won by a close margin and no longer an automatic score. More emphasis is given on scoring rounds 10-8, for situations such as when fighters are just trying to make it out of the round or if one fighter is clearly superior to the other. From the new rules a judge must consider 10-8 and must “always” give a 10-8 score when a fighter dominates action in a round or striked or grappled against their opponents in a way that diminished their opponents abilities.

Dave Meltzer of MMA Fighting reports that the UFC 207: Ronda Rousey v. Amanda Nunes, recorded over 1 million PPV buys. The UFC recorded five PPV shows in 2016. McGregor was the main event in three of the events that earned more than 1 million buys with UFC 200 being the fourth show that exceeded 1 million buys. Rousey was notably missing from all the pre-fight media events and there was very little mention of Amanda Nunes in the commercials for UFC 207. The UFC 207 co-main event saw Cody Garbrandt take on Dominick Cruz in an entertaining fight for the bantamweight title, which surely aided in the PPV buys.